>There is no such thing as 'poor design'.
>"Inappropriate design", yes.
>All designs have diferent criteria. Not using an RS232 driver on a
>$1000 product would be inapproprate. Using an expensive
>driver for a very low-cost product where cost is the
>top priority would be equally inappropriate.

Of course you need to balance BOM cost with the cost
of returns, unhappy customers, customer service time, etc.

>--- snip --

>I highly doubt it - I've never come across a single RS232 port that doesn't
work fine with 5V levels
>(many thousand products in the field).
>Has anyone ...?

Yes.  "Most" PC's work ok (with a lot of assumptions), however
RS232 doesn't always mean "connected to a PC".  Try tying
together 2 devices, say a FEP and a modem with 150 feet of
rs232 cable.  It then becomes important.



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